It's clear that brands' current priority is uniting data.Companies are striving for the single customer view, allowing smarter marketing and increasing customer lifetime value or better mapping the customer journey.

Even in the UK, where online shopping is at it highest (compared to offline), the percentage of transactions that happen online is around 13%. That's 87% of purchases happening somewhere in the real world.

That's 87% of customer purchase data that brands and retailers want to capture, if they are to identify and market to all of their customers online (providing they opt in).

And, of course, there are some products bought relatively infrequently online, as a percentage of overall sales. Cosmetics is a good example.

Club Clarins is nothing new, it's nearly two years old. But, the scheme is a simple and effective attempt to incentivise customers to hand over some purchase-history data online, after they've purchased a Clarins product in a department store.

I thought it was worth discussing loyalty schemes in the context of brands' pursuit of the omnichannel grail when selling wholesale and retail.